Click-Through Rate (CTR) is a crucial performance indicator that every business should know and understand. CTR is the percentage of user clicks a site gets over the number of times it was seen. This helps brands determine that their content doesn’t only make it to the first page of search engine results – it lets them know whether users are actually clicking the link and viewing content.
It’s important to note that CTR impacts your SEO as well. Having a high CTR increases your chance to make it to top search results because Google assumes when more people are clicking your link, the content there is more likely to be relevant. Therefore, you need to understand how you can improve your blog’s CTR to make sure that your digital campaigns remain effective.
Always Be Relevant
You may have heard this quote from several digital marketers already: content is king. The key to driving traffic to your blog is having content that is helpful or entertaining and using the right keywords to increase your chances of being seen. Publish high-quality content that is focused on specific keywords relevant to your market. For example, if you’re writing about how to make dogs feel more comfortable in crates, then you would want to go for more specific keywords such as ‘crate training dogs’, instead of very general keywords like ‘dogs’ or ‘crates’ which put you against a lot of other content and decreases your visibility.
Write Catchy Headlines
Headlines have the power to make you gain or lose visitors. Make sure that they are attractive, compelling, and thought-provoking. Using statistics, adjectives, why’s, and how’s in your title and headline is helpful because they give your audience a general idea of your content and its benefits. Here are some examples:
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One important thing to remember is that Google shows only the first 60 characters of a blog post title in search results. Optimize CTR by keeping your post title to this count. Tools such as WordPress SEO by Yoast allows you to see how your title and headlines look like when shown as search results on Google, so it’s a great way to check if your headlines are catchy and attractive enough for users.
Use Timestamps Wisely
There are pros and cons to using timestamps because they can make your content seem either fresh or old. If your content is based more on news or trends, then having timestamps can increase its relevance for users. For evergreen content, however, timestamps will only make it seem old and irrelevant and decrease CTR.
If you have more time on your hands, then you can opt to revise evergreen content and republish them every once in a while to keep timestamp usage optimal. Otherwise, it might be best to simply remove timestamps for evergreen content. You can use the date exclusion SEO plugin on WordPress for this.
Keep Loading Speeds High
Google penalizes sites that load more than a second or two. They are deemed to be unreliable and decreases crawlability and slow loading pages also run the risk of losing audience interest. Boost site performance by leverage caches and optimizing images, media files, and site layout.
Utilize Social Media Platforms
With millions of active users, social media can help boost your SEO in many ways. One is generating leads, especially for evergreen content. Use social media to share content linking to your blog to further increase site traffic. Use attractive images to go along with your posts to increase its visibility and CTR.
Analyzing and keeping click-through rates high will do wonders for your digital marketing strategies. The key to having a successful strategy will always start with how well you understand your audience and their needs. Without this knowledge, it would be difficult to determine ways to be relevant for them and will keep your CTRs down despite all the plans you come up with.